eFootie: The rise of football eSports

A radio documentary investigating the growth of competitive football gaming, it's future sucess and it's relationship with the real game.

For many years we could differentiate from a game of football and the Fifa video game franchise, the graphics may have improved year after year but there was generally a lack of recognition for the game from football clubs.

However this changed in 2016, with the growth of YouTube and Fifa videos on YouTube as well as competitive Fifa gaming at events such as the FIFA Interactive World Cup, in early February Bundesliga side Wolfsburg announced they we’re planning to sign a professional Fifa player.

They signed Englishman David Bytheway, which then saw a flurry of top teams across Europe rush to sign their own professional eSports player to represent them in tournaments, including West Ham and Manchester City from the Premier League.

Since then the competitive Fifa gaming scene has gone from strength to strength with near enough a team announcing a new player every week, and with the recent formation of the Celtic eSports League, many more teams across Britain are expected to join.

The latest development is Wolves signing of Rohan Ricketts (who features in the documentary), as the first ever professional Fifa player to actually have ever played the game professionally.

The Documentary investigates competitive football gaming and its popularity as well as looking into the future and how it can develop alongside the beautiful game.

Accompanying the documentary is the blog with many interesting articles and interviews relating to the world of football eSports, as well as a Soundcloud account with extended interviews with all of the interviewees in the documentary.